Fundraiser for the Children Advocacy Center w/ Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem, Peter Mulvey, Pamela Means at The Iron Horse on Tuesday, June 2 2026
w/ Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem, Peter Mulvey, Pamela Means
After 25 years together, Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem is an indelible alchemy of song, groove, friendship and soul. Beloved in their native New England, they have toured across the U.S. and Canada to festivals, theaters, and coffeehouses, leaving audiences humming, hopeful, and renewed.
Known for their lockstep harmonies, incisive songwriting, and lush arrangements with “stylish, unexpected choices” (Acoustic Guitar), Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem has always been a standard-bearer among string bands who stretch the boundaries of American roots music. Arbo is “blessed with an unmistakable voice, both light and sultry, with a hint of tremolo and smoke” (Acoustic Guitar), and her singing and fiddling pulls from old-time, blues, and swing. Anand Nayak’s electric and acoustic guitar style mixes folk, blues, and rock; bassist Andrew Kinsey doubles on clawhammer banjo; and drummer Scott Kessel plays a homemade kit of wooden boxes, tin cans, caulk tubes, tambourines, and a vinyl suitcase. Arbo, Nayak and Kinsey all write songs, and the band covers gems from Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, The Georgia Sea Island Singers, The Pretenders, and others, spinning performance sets that plumb the human condition with poetry, bravery, curiosity, and love.
Writes Maverick Magazine, “How refreshing to hear something that sounds as if it has come from people who are genuinely original thinkers. As soon as Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem strike up, you realize this is a band that is unpredictable and impossible to pigeonhole. But, what a thoroughly mellifluous melange — sophisticated, soulful and always handled with care and a lightness of touch that is part folk/jazz/country, part blues/old time, and all good. There is a togetherness that flows right through the heart of the performance. It never gets too clever and always remains understated and classy.”
Peter Mulvey has been a songwriter, road-dog, raconteur and almost-poet since before he can remember. Raised working-class Catholic on the Northwest side of Milwaukee, he took a semester in Ireland, and immediately began cutting classes to busk on Grafton Street in Dublin and hitchhike through the country, finding whatever gigs he could. Back stateside, he spent a couple years gigging in the Midwest before lighting out for Boston, where he returned to busking (this time in the subway) and coffeehouses. Small shows led to larger shows, which eventually led to regional and then national and international touring. The wheels have not stopped since.
Pamela Means is a Easthampton MA-based Out(spoken), Biracial, independent artist whose “kamikaze guitar style” and punchy provocative songs have worn a hole in two of her acoustic guitars. Armed with the razor wit of a stand-up comic, engaging presence, elegant poetry, and irresistible charm, Pamela Means’s “stark, defiant songs” (New York Times) set the status quo and the stage afire.Pamela’s commitment to interrogating social ills was fostered by her unique childhood. “As the adopted daughter of a white mother and black father, I learned about dismantling systems of oppression from the inside out.” Pamela received her first guitar at the age of fourteen, just after her mother died of cancer, and it soon became Pamela’s primary vehicle for expression. It would also serve as a passport out of a life that consisted of poverty, foster homes, and the inner city life of hyper-segregated Milwaukee WI.Pamela Means relocated to Boston, busked in the city subway and famed Harvard Square, founded her own record label and began touring. Pamela has since performed on three continents and across the country, gaining fans and rave reviews from Anchorage to Amsterdam, Sydney to Stockholm, San Francisco to Honolulu to New York, breaking album sales records at national festivals and sharing stages with Pete Seeger, Neil Young, Shawn Colvin, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Gil Scott-Heron, Adrian Belew, Violent Femmes, Holly Near and more. Means has also been the recipient of several nominations and music awards in multiple categories.Pamela Means “exhibits a rare emotional fire in today’s folk world,” (Seven Days, Burlington VT) so much so that Ani DiFranco exclaimed, “you’ve got such a deep, deep groove, I can’t get out. And, I wouldn’t want to.” With Truth as ammunition, Pamela Means brings the fight for social justice and human dignity to the forefront of a new generation.
